How Auto Pollution Impacts Your Health

11/7/2011 2:05PM

New research from Los Angeles, a city defined by the automobile, adds to a pattern of public health studies in recent months on the surprising impact of air pollution from tail pipe exhaust. Lee Hotz has details on Lunch Break.

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

go ... the games take a toll on them or a new research is indicating yes we have we hope he's right here to tells all about this research which is pretty disturbing actually to those of us who live in the city Tello of the highlights of the allowances during the nation state does that this is preliminary and this is the ... become a ... pressing question that a lot of scientists ... are now trying to figure out fine investigate the weather it causes damage ... and is so why now ... among the elderly and other cities now to show an association between the cognitive failing memory problems emotional disorders ... and higher levels of traffic exhaustive studies and Boston studies done in the or ... the other NBA spectrum show ... a very disturbing ... signs of developmental delays the slight intelligence the props ... tendencies toward pension deficits emotional disorders ... among the very very young ... aam ... in Los Angeles the ... we all know is the world's most congested city there some ... public health studies now showing an association I couldn't decide the association ... between high levels of traffic exhaust and what does ... um now again very preliminary but clearly very disturbing ... so ... this is a topic that is really becoming ... at the forefront of the public health at the genealogy set ... and under a lot of the ... Laboratories' now with the UCLA pursuits of California Ohio State University ... they're now looking at the ... very cleverly contrived man studies to figure out the basic biology ... of this might work ... because I'm you know everybody commutes there's no ... evidence at the moment I should emphasize again that the ... your daily drive has any particular toll ... on your cognitive abilities to your emotional stability there looking very long-term ... chronic exposures ... people of very high levels of ... trust exhausted to finding high levels that she would ... no encounter ... living ... within a mile or two ... of three went through it with the Bouton amassing a sales in India these carbon particles that are in the exhaustive Ardi been implicated in things like respiratory diseases heart disease certain cancers ... now looking specifically at what you're talking about your story to be a Pursell journal tomorrow is the brains ... of people I wonder ... how much they mean it did thirty minutes of David ninety minutes a day had to pay any breakdown of the big time exposure that you need to sort of ... have some these palms trader ... well the short answer is No and factor in these mass studies one of the things are trying to figure out we all have grown up believing that the brain is in fact ... you know protected insulated from a lot of these things ... by ... natural ... properties of the blood ... brain barrier for ACEHearing and Run's is is that ... um ... what they're doing is they're taking my sin there actually is an Elector like being in a Los Angeles freeway there ... from roads for that traffic this delightful thousand cars an hour ... I'm in or making these mice live in these ... I'm there for like five hours ten hours a day for weeks in time ... and are able to sit and actually look no one of the puzzles of the moment is ... they can now see the organic anatomical evidence of inflammation of constricted blood vessels in the training the brain the kinds of things that you might normally associate with old-timers disease to tell what ... began preliminary laboratory I can say that many times ... aam ... absolutely because you mention that our eye and a surplus and the protection affected we thought was in play ... I was reading advance copy her story at all it was very interesting ... on the back and look it up by a worker might become the deity of children have never Boehringer ... of mothers who have read quite a bit of this of this traffic fumes ... well it's a little bit about what there was very very twosome really quite remarkable work is being done in one university by a group of environmental health specialists there ... too ... what are the questions that were sickened Sonsini study like this is what are so many other factors diet exercise education level where you live in ... a kind of ... things you doing to Friday's short distance up to what they did is they recruited pregnant women in actually gave them Pursell their pet monitors ... so for certain number of hours a day they could actually be monitored the pair they were literally breathing ... they were able to vent and chemical analysis to tease out the various Kolon's of the things going on ... and then when these children were born ... they were then ... this is the clever part ... the DNA analysis ... of the blood cells in the cord ... blood in the umbilical cord blood and they found much to their consternation surprised ... that there was what they call it Vinay add up ... which is to say I kind of chemical smooth ... aam ... on the big instance Genome but indicated that it had been exposed prenatal each of these kinds of ... it's very tiny carbon nanoparticles they ... call Poly sickly aromatic hydrocarbons that he debated the Leyden into ... our regulatory reviews and diesel trucks and things that they call the store they were then able to use that marker as a as a way of tracking children who had very high exposure to these ... kinds of pollution versus children who didn't ... and it's been falling now since nineteen ninety eight or so ... and you know at age three and five and seven they can see that these children are not getting ... the developmental Markham and their their highest level ... this fractional but significant Mike use a Deckman of the bow on average about four point now ... if you're the high-end four points when I actually much difference in the entry of an active and six ... going ... on but yet people like me you're on the low and four points is lot ... I mean what what it means ... something to make by that but that doesn't the end of a statistical ... evidence here